Climate variability and institutional fexibility: Resource governance at the intersection between ecological instability and mobility in drylands

Drylands are characterized by high rainfall variability, both in time and space. Long dry seasons, large fluctuations in annual rainfall, and intra-seasonal and localized droughts result in even more extreme fluctuations in resource availability. Typically, dryland inhabitants respond using a range of strategies, including investments in land but also extensive mobile use of natural resources such as nomadic pastoralism. This flexible use of natural resources is also reflected in the flexible set-up of natural resource governance regimes. Yet these flexible regimes increasingly run counter to formal systems of land tenure and land allocation and are affected by increasing climate variability and progressive climate change. In this chapter, an overview will be provided of the main issues at the intersection between climate variability and resource governance regimes and the linkages with present-day climate change.